Family Lies

Posted by fxckfeelings on March 20, 2014

Families have the magical ability to hide their contempt in plain sight or, sometimes, create the illusion that that their torment doesn’t really exist. No matter what type of nasty sorcery your family works on you, don’t fight it ineffectually by rebelling or getting angry. First figure out what you think is right, then, when you have sufficient conviction on which to ground your courage, draw a line without allowing yourself to be drawn into a fight, and shazam, the spell is broken.
–Dr. Lastname

My husband knows his family is full of overbearing jerks, beginning with his father, but he has a strong sense of duty and wants our kids to know their cousins. So, for a long time, we spent long holidays with his father and sibs, but after a few years my husband agreed that it would be best for me to opt out because they were especially nasty to me and I couldn’t see any point to putting up with it except during special family events. The strange thing is that my husband still spends quite a bit of time with them, even though they’re pretty sarcastic and critical with him, and then he comes home worn out and grumpy. I wonder if he spends more time there than is good for him, but he treats my concerns as if I just want him to take my side against his family. My goal is to get him to see that I don’t want him to support me against his family, just to own up to the fact that his family possibly isn’t that nice to anyone and he spends more time than is healthy.

Whether you wish to comment about a husband’s overinvestment in anything from booze to his bracket to, yes, social time with an overbearing family, you can’t tell him what to do without becoming an overbearing wife who “hates” his dad. And while you may indeed dislike his father, that’s not your point.

You don’t want your relationship with or opinion of his family mediated or commented upon, because the issue concerns his relationship with them, and you wish he would take your concerns seriously rather than treating them as a personal emotional problem, a challenge to his loyalty, or a general rattling of the chain the he imagines connects you to his ankle.

As ever, your chance of being heard is much better if you can put aside negative feelings about his obnoxious family and talk positively about what you’ve observed and why you think it’s a problem. Yes, this means you’re better off not communicating your deeper feelings with your husband, since they happen to be negative. As we’ve said many times, however, non-communication and lying are too very different things, and keeping quiet is what makes a good marriage work. If you want to complain about his father, take it to your hairdresser instead.

Keeping it positive, tell your husband how much you admire his loyalty to his family and agree that, while it’s good for the kids to know their cousins, you do have some concerns. Then let him know what you observe, without implying personal dislike. For instance, if what you see is that his father and siblings tend to make demeaning jokes about him and he comes home looking worn and tired, which has a negative effect on your family, tell him nicely that you see an old behavior pattern with a negative impact that may be bigger than he thinks. Far from dissing his dad, urge him to make his own observations about the negative impact on him and the kids of spending a day or two with his family.

After you’ve described what you see, don’t argue. When it occurs again, which it will, keep quiet and let a raised eyebrow do the talking. Your point is not that his dad is bad (though, again, he may be) but that your husband’s management should take into account a negative impact that he doesn’t want to see, but that you have a right to bring to his attention.

Don’t try to protect him from his family, or you’ll wind up making him feel like a kid who has to please warring parents. Instead, give him tools for evaluating what too much time with his family does to him, his marriage, and his kids, and urge him to make choices according to his own values.

At that point, you can share all your observations without implying he’s being disloyal, putting him under emotional pressure to do what you want, or making him think you’re a bossy wife instead of a patient partner.

STATEMENT:
“It’s hard to watch my husband take shit from his family and go back for more, but trying to pull him away doesn’t work. I will keep my negative feelings to myself while I help him see and decide for himself whether their influence on him needs limiting.”

My girlfriend inherited a business from her mother that’s carrying a large debt, but she’s a good daughter and has tried to get her late mother’s partners to agree to a fair liquidation. The problem is that they’re impossible to deal with and, meanwhile, it’s not clear how much debt she’s responsible for and how much debt I’d become responsible for if we get married, which I think we’d both like to do. If my girlfriend has a clear idea of the debt, she’s not saying, so I’m pretty much in the dark. My goal is to figure out how to help her close this deal so she can get out from under the debt and our marriage won’t be threatened before it begins.

Whenever a prospective partner has potentially messy legal problems, do your own assessment about what it would take to clean them up. The good news here is that your partner didn’t create her mess and, from what you say, she’s working hard to clean things up already. There’s a possibility, however, that her sense of duty to her late mother and her being too nice may interfere with good decision-making and proper self-protection. That’s why you still have to do your own evaluation to see if there’s a way to shut this problem down and then see whether she’s got the nerve and courage to do it.

First, put together a list of dumb questions for her lawyer and ask to accompany her to her next meeting. Ask the lawyer whether your girlfriend has any personal liability for the business, whether the liability could entangle you if you were married and, if it could, whether there’s a way for your girlfriend to cut her losses and get out, regardless of what other family members want.

Now that you know what your girlfriend can and can’t do to protect herself, advise her on creating a time-limited plan for either making the business work (if that’s really possible) and/or exiting, with or without family approval. Support your girlfriend’s right to do what she thinks is fair and necessary regardless of guilt or family pressure. What she does with that support has the added bonus of telling you how good her boundaries are, i.e., how good she is at protecting both of you from being burdened by unreasonable responsibilities, which is important to know before you sign up for the rest of your natural lives together.

If there is a way to protect the two of you that she can’t take because of irrational guilt and family pressure, don’t give up. As you’ve said, you can stay unmarried and use your single status to negotiate with her about her plans. In the long run, this may be helpful for her and give you both the partnership you need.

Hopefully, she’ll benefit from your advice and you’ll both get to see the advantages of your partnership in terms of your strength complementing hers. In any case, this is a good time to find out whether you can work well together on an issue like this before you commit to working together for good.

STATEMENT:
“I feel helpless whenever I try to figure out my girlfriend’s financial situation, but I don’t need to wait for her to provide me with a resolution. I will try to find out what I need to know by asking the right people a few questions that my girlfriend may not have considered because of her sense of family responsibility. Then I can coach her into doing what’s necessary without taking the whole load on herself.”